Rebellion in BJP and need for inner-party democracy

It was as though the Bihar debacle provided the BJP stalwarts and veterans like L K Advani and others the perfect opportunity that they were waiting for to target PM Narendra Modi for his ‘dictatorial’ style of functioning. As they say, one should hit the iron when it is hot and that is what the former did with their joint statement issued on the eve of Diwali, two days after the results of Bihar Assembly polls were announced.

The hard-hitting, to the point joint statement issued by Advani, Yashwant Sinha, Murli Manohar Joshi and Shanta Kumar minces no words in its attack on the powers-that-be, urging the party leadership to fix the responsibility for the Bihar fiasco.

“To say that everyone is responsible for the defeat is to make sure that no one is held responsible,” the statement signed by Sinha says, adding, it seemed no lessons were learnt from the Delhi drubbing.

“The principal reason for the latest defeat is the way the Party has been emasculated in the last one year… The review should cover the way the party has been forced to kowtow to a handful and how its consensual character has been destroyed.”

It is a sad commentary on a party that took pride in being ‘different’ from others.

Repeated barbs from Arun Shourie and Shatrughan Sinha on PM Modi for his style of functioning showed that the stalwarts were not alone in taking on the latter. Bhola Singh, BJP’s septuagenarian MP from Bihar, went to attack the top leadership by asking, “Who is Amit Shah? He and the PM are who they are because we entrusted them with all our power… The top leadership alone, which took all the decisions, has to take responsibility for the defeat.”

So why are the BJP’s disgruntled leaders washing their party’s dirty laundry in public?

When the rebels alleged the consensual character of the party was destroyed, it became apparent they were left out in the cold and that they were not a part of the decision-making process. It’s only a few that call the shots, they rued.

It is a sad commentary on a party that took pride in being ‘different’ from others. We are “the party with a difference”, they would proudly claim.

The principal attack of the BJP on Congress has been that it is being run by one family, voices barely get the chance to be heard, showing that there is no inner-party democracy in India’s Grand Old Party. Therefore, when two or three people started taking all the important decisions in the former, it was natural that seniors would register their grievances at the time of their choosing.

Two back-to-back setbacks in Delhi and Bihar have, to an extent, weakened PM Modi and Shah’s absolute hold over the party, aiding the Advani camp to stage a comeback. The Modi camp must understand that a country like India cannot be run by a party where only a few individuals rule the roost. Democracy and diversity are in our DNA and therefore, an undemocratic political party will before long find itself isolated, devoid of any support if it stopped listening to others, especially to its own people.

PM Modi must pay heed to what the old guard has to say to him before it’s too late or maybe he has already burnt his bridges. The BJP must show that it is indeed different from others by respecting voices of dissent.

“More young people are entering the labor force, millions want to leave agriculture but can’t find construction work because construction activity has slowed down because the investment rate in the economy has slowed down.”

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party dismisses concerns about the job data saying it does not capture the real picture because it focuses only on the 15 percent of Indians who work in the formal economy. Pixabay

For people streaming in from rural areas around New Delhi, the first stop is a collection of busy city intersections where contractors select daily wage labor from the crowds of young and old waiting every morning to get work.

Many standing at these intersections say they get work for barely half the month. “I have the ability to work hard. I never turn down any work. But I would prefer to get a cleaner, permanent job,” says 29-year-old Tek Chand. “The problem is one day I have money to buy rations, the next day I don’t.” Like millions of others, he migrated from his village three years ago to seek work and a better life in the city.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, center, arrives with his cabinet colleagues on the opening day of the budget session of the Indian Parliament, in New Delhi, Jan. 31, 2019. VOA

As India prepares for general elections on April 11, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being attacked by opposition parties for failing to make good on a promise he made in 2014 to create millions of jobs for India’s huge young population. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party rebuts that criticism and says India is generating new opportunities as it becomes one of the world’s fastest growing major economies.

Job creation is a massive challenge for a nation with one of the world’s youngest populations — half the country’s 1.3 billion people are under the age of 25.

Recent data shows that joblessness has soared to record high levels. Opposition parties have made joblessness one of their principal election planks and have accused the prime minister of failing the estimated 8 to 10 million young people who enter the workforce every year.

The independent Mumbai-based Center for Monitoring Indian Economy estimates that unemployment reached 7.2 percent last month and that 11 million jobs were lost in 2018. With a working population of 500 million, that translates into more than 30 million people waiting for jobs. An unpublished official survey that showed unemployment at a 45-year-high has also been widely quoted by Indian media.

India’s main opposition Congress party President Rahul Gandhi speaks during a public meeting at Adalaj in Gandhinagar, India, March 12, 2019. VOA

On the campaign trail, the head of the main opposition Congress Party, Rahul Gandhi, who is seen as Modi’s principal challenger, talks repeatedly about a “jobs crisis.”

“Our government is refusing to accept that we have a massive crisis and potential disaster in front of us,” Gandhi told a group of university students in New Delhi recently, many who will be first time voters.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party dismisses concerns about the job data saying it does not capture the real picture because it focuses only on the 15 percent of Indians who work in the formal economy. It points to a recent industry report that jobs have been created in the medium and small sectors.

The BJP says millions of people have found work in the transport and infrastructure sectors or as delivery boys in booming online businesses as India becomes one of the world’s fastest growing major economies. They point out that the issue is not jobs but livelihoods, and point to millions of people who are not counted in job data.

They are self-employed people like cab owner Chain Pal Singh. As the app based taxi business boomed, Singh’s friend, who operated a cab, persuaded him to quit his job and take out a loan to buy a car. His decision has paid off — in four years he has earned enough money to invest in two more cabs.

Singh says he is much better off than when he held a job. “I used to earn about $225 dollars a month. Now in some months I can earn almost double that amount. Its beneficial for me.”

Following defeats in key state elections in December, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told parliament last month, “This truth has to be acknowledged. The unorganized sector has 80 to 85 percent of the employment.” He pointed to millions of commercial vehicles sold in recent years and questioned if they had not generated jobs for drivers.

Economists admit India’s large informal sector has made it difficult to calculate employment, but they say joblessness or underemployment remains the country’s biggest challenge. While scarcity of jobs is not a new problem, two disruptive economic steps in the last two years exacerbated the problem.

In 2016 a sweeping currency ban meant to tackle the problem of illegal cash, dried up jobs as it created huge currency shortages, particularly in small businesses and in the countryside. A poorly-implemented tax reform known as the Goods and Services Tax a few months later was another blow to businesses.

Meanwhile, Modi’s “Made in India” campaign, which aimed at making India a manufacturing hub like China, has made a slow start and sluggish labor-intensive sectors cannot cater to growing numbers of job seekers.

“We can’t keep patting ourselves on the back that we are the fastest growing economy specially if all these other indicators are not growing at a rate that will absorb the growing labor force,” says Santosh Mehrotra, a human development economist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“More young people are entering the labor force, millions want to leave agriculture but can’t find construction work because construction activity has slowed down because the investment rate in the economy has slowed down.”

He points out that exports, another sector that created a number of jobs has also not been performing well.

As the campaign heats up, the opposition will try to keep the spotlight on jobs, or lack of them, even as the BJP tries to focus on national security following a recent confrontation with Pakistan. The final verdict on whether to give Prime Minister Modi a second term in office will be delivered by millions of voters when they cast their ballots. (VOA)